“The GLP-1 Lifestyle: Transform Your Metabolism & Achieve Lasting Weight Loss With Or Without Semaglutide”

Anesthesiologist Joshua Hackett grew up in Chico, attended Chico State, and now practices in Humboldt County. He has a “passion project: increasing metabolic health for the general population.”

Hackett’s project is carefully presented in “The GLP-1 Lifestyle: Transform Your Metabolism & Achieve Lasting Weight Loss With Or Without Semaglutide” ($14.99 in paperback, independently published, see facebook.com/groups/glp1lifestyle; also for Amazon Kindle). His book is for educational purposes and is “not a substitute for professional medical advice.” 

“Semaglutide,” he writes, “is a medication initially designed to treat type 2 diabetes”; it’s also proving effective in “harnessing the power of our own biology, targeting the hormonal imbalances and physiological mechanisms that contribute to weight gain. At least that’s what the commercials want you to believe. Of course, part is true, part is false, and part is unknown.” (A lengthy bibliography points to medical journal articles as well as non-academic sources.)

Semaglutides are GLP-1 “receptor agonists” (binding to a cell receptor producing a similar effect as the body’s natural function) which are in such medications as Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus. “GLP-1 influences digestion by slowing down the rate at which food leaves the stomach,” stimulates “insulin release from the pancreas,” and sends “a message to the brain that we’ve had enough to eat.”

There’s great detail about how GLP-1 works but Hackett alerts readers to side effects (some severe)--and the rebound, when weight comes right back. Instead, “the goal is to utilize semaglutide as a catalyst for change, a springboard to a healthier lifestyle that can be sustained even after the medication is discontinued.”

The second half of the book details a holistic approach to weight control, focusing on exercise and meal plans that aid one’s gut health; the gut “produces GLP-1” and “is the epicenter of the entire immune system.” Hackett also encourages sunlight exposure (for vitamin D production) and “grounding,” putting bare feet on the earth, which aids in stress reduction. And, if needed, supplements.

Hackett refrains from exaggerated claims, even for measures he advocates. His focus at the end is on healthy habits and not wonder drugs, however wonderful they may be. 

"Ward Of The Court"

In 1989 Christopher Hall began his studies at the Northwestern University School of Dentistry in Chicago. He was twenty-two when he received his acceptance packet as he was completing four challenging years as a chemistry major at Chico State University ("I was happy to be done with all those meticulous labs").

He reminded himself that at Chico "I had received an excellent education. I had put myself on firm ground by earning my Bachelor of Science degree. I would always be able to take care of myself." Hall's memoir makes it clear that this was not a boast but rather a realization that such inner confidence had saved his life. 

"My dad had died when I was fourteen years old," he writes in "Ward Of The Court" ($5.99 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle). "Sometime during the first four years of my life, my father was imprisoned for killing a man. … My mother is a tragic figure; when my father was imprisoned … she turned to alcohol. …"

Born in Watts, at four Hall "was declared a ward of the court." He was placed in a foster home, "the beginning of a journey that would include two more foster homes, four boys’ homes, and multiple stints in three different Juvenile Hall facilities."

Something began growing inside Hall, some sense of future prospects. "I knew that to have a fighting chance I would have to attend college and get an education." His going to Chico State "lifted a huge burden off my shoulders. I had kept all this anxiety inside about the future beginning at about the age of fourteen."

Hall's story is told in matter-of-fact language. There are many schools, a failed marriage, a stint in the Army, and a move away from dentistry to his true love, family medicine. A poignant letter from his brother Wayne (serving life in prison), provides a startling contrast. Hall was thirty before his long-held goal began to come true. But it happened. It happened.

"I hope," he writes, "that at least one young person sitting out there in foster care, the juvenile justice system, or a boys’ or girls’ home will be inspired."

"The Organ Shortage Crisis In America: Incentives, Civic Duty, And Closing The Gap"

Kidney disease "is the ninth leading cause of death in the United States." Yet, according to Andy Flescher, former Religious Studies professor at Chico State University and now Core Public Health Faculty for the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the problem has a solution.

"Other than a lobe of the liver," Flescher writes, "the kidney is the only transplantable organ one can donate while still alive. … Roughly between 5,000 and 6,000 people annually are living donors, which on average amounts to between 20 and 30 percent of all organ transplantations carried out in a year."

Flescher's proposals at first seem counterintuitive, but they get at the very nature of human altruism. "The Organ Shortage Crisis In America: Incentives, Civic Duty, And Closing The Gap" ($29.95 in paperback from Georgetown University Press; also for Amazon Kindle), by Andrew Michael Flescher, is an extraordinary exploration of what "giving the gift of life" actually means to donors.

Flescher is a "living donor advocate" working directly with those considering giving a kidney, such as a man planning to donate to his ex-wife; a woman wanting to donate to a person she met on Facebook; and a woman ready to donate to her girlfriend. Flescher's reports show the care taken to ensure informed consent.

One would think that such altruistic behaviors could be encouraged by changing laws to allow for the buying and selling of organs. It turns out that there is good reason to believe such incentives would actually have the opposite effect. 

Human altruism is mischaracterized as a rare and saintly gift with no return expected. The reality is that the altruism of the donor is about establishing community, "furthering the relationship between the giver and the recipient." A payment would only muddy the waters.

The book addresses better ways of making the path easier for living donors. A key prescription is for readers to devote "two to four hours … to visit someone currently undergoing dialysis." One will be forever changed in the encounter; "the limits of what is possible versus what isn't are redrawn, for ourselves individually and for society together."

Eve Ensler coming Thursday to Chico State University

Best recognized as author of "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler is also an internationally known activist and the founder of V-Day (vday.org), "a global movement to end violence against women and girls."

Her heart is in the Congo, with the women brutalized beyond measure, "women with missing limbs and reproductive organs, women with machete lashes across their faces and arms and legs ... women carrying babies the color of their rapists, women who smelled like urine and feces because they had fistulas--holes between their vaginas and bladder and rectum--and now they were leaking, leaking."

Ensler's childhood was also a story of bodily abuse. "I grew up not in a home but in a kind of free fall of anger and violence that led to a life of constant movement." A father's incest, a mother's emotional distance. Ensler "drank myself mad, numbed myself with drugs at sixteen, snuck out with grown men to the Fillmore East for the late show, lived naked on communes, and stole things."

Years passed. Then, "on March 17, 2010, they discovered a huge tumor in my uterus. Cancer threw me through the window of my disassociation into the center of my body's crisis. The Congo threw me deep into the crisis of the world, and these two experiences merged as I faced the disease and what I felt was the beginning of the end."

Ensler's harrowing story--in-your-face blunt--is told in "In The Body Of The World" ($25 in hardcover from Metropolitan Books; also available in Amazon Kindle e-book format, and as an audiobook read by the author).

Ensler is scheduled to speak at Chico State University's Laxson Auditorium this Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Premium tickets are $40, adults $35, seniors $33, students $20, available at the University Box Office, (530) 898-6333 or online at http://bit.ly/14FaSXp.

The story of her treatment, the effects of chemo, the doctors, nurses, friends and family and people in the Congo gripped by her pain, the death of her mother, and how she became a survivor, is a searing account that is impossible to put down. The story, ultimately, is "about showing up and not forgetting, about keeping promises, about giving everything and losing everything." It is love, "endless and generous and enveloping."

How "Wings of Eagles" came to be

"Wings of Eagles: The Joseph Alvarez Organization for Seriously Ill Children," founded in 1993, seeks "to relieve the financial burden of families" faced with life-threatening illness. "There is an 85 percent divorce rate," writes Georgia Alvarez, "among families with seriously ill children. If we could relieve the financial burden of families, help pay the costs that insurance, that Medi-Cal don't begin to cover, maybe the family could weather the emotional storm they would be faced with."

Georgia Alvarez is intimately acquainted with that "emotional storm." Born and raised in Princeton, she lived "on a two-thousand-acre walnut ranch in which my husband, Alberto, is the shop supervisor." With housing provided (even in their moves "from Butte City, to Chico, and then to Nord") the couple and their children had few real worries--until the doctor's phone call in 1989.

Joseph, then eight, was diagnosed with "acute lymphocytic leukemia with a Philadelphia chromosome ... so rare, that only ten children are diagnosed with it a year," all males. Joseph was terminal, one of his doctors said, and "even with a bone marrow transplant, he only had less than 20 percent chance for survival."

What happened next, the family strains, the tears, Joseph's care for others in the midst of his own pain, Georgia's "spiritual dreams" and a new relationship with God, are all recounted in "The Simple Plan: A Book Of Hope/A Book Of Dreams" ($19.99 in paperback from Xlibris; also available in Amazon Kindle e-book format). There's a section of family photographs, too: This happened to a real family, and it nearly tore them apart.

Despair and hope played tag. Before the bone marrow transplant (his younger sister Mary was the donor), Joseph underwent repeated full-body radiation and harsh chemotherapy. The transplant seemed to help, but then Joseph relapsed. His mother described him as wise beyond his years. At one point Joseph said to her, "I'm an angel, and God sent me down to earth to teach, but now my job is done." He died early in 1991.

Thanks to an article in this newspaper, strangers began to make donations to help the family. Two years later, Georgia, with other volunteers, established Wings of Eagles, an ongoing memorial to a little boy whose life touched so many.

Where is God when you're dying?

John Gilbert was born in 1976 in Castro Valley's Eden Hospital. Eventually he and his younger brother Alan, and his parents, Bruce and Cathy, moved to Paradise. In between was the terse phone call from the doctor. "I'm calling to inform you that your son's lab tests are in. John has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. His life expectance is 16 years." Diagnosed at five, John would live another twenty years, years full pain and grief beyond measure, but also of a growing Christian faith. His parents' own faith, tested in the extreme, meant following Jesus in a way they had never understood before.

John left a manuscript that he hoped, one day, would see publication as a testament to God's goodness. His father has much to say as well, and the result is "From Eden To Paradise: Something Stronger Than Time” ($22.99 in paperback from Xulon Press; also available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook e-book formats), "an autobiography by John Stuart Gilbert; a father's reflections by Bruce Stuart Gilbert."

Bruce Gilbert is scheduled to be interviewed by Nancy Wiegman for Nancy's Bookshelf, this Friday at 10:00 a.m. on Northstate Public Radio KCHO (91.7 FM).

John's service dog, Friedman, a "spry and handsome" Golden Retriever, would become his best friend. When John graduated with honors from Paradise High, John, in his wheelchair, accompanied by Friedman, accepted his diploma. When he turned to go down, "I saw something that shocked me. All of my classmates, even the ones I didn't know, and all of their families stood on their feet applauding me and cheering me on."

Bruce, in the second section of the book, notes that the standing ovation provoked not a feeling of being honored but one of being betrayed. Where were parents and students when John was being harrassed by bullies, especially in junior high, and when he needed human companionship? An ovation is easy; living the daily life with someone as broken in body as John, humbling.

But the excruciating dailyness is the place God met John and Alan, Bruce and Cathy. Bruce writes with the love of a father and heart of a pastor, John as one transformed by suffering. Where is God when you're dying? Thankfully, right here.

An indispensable planner for caregivers

When she was eighteen, local author Tory Zellick became the primary caregiver for her mother, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. "The next six and a half years," Zellick writes, "were filled with doctor appointments, surgical procedures, tests, scans, and treatments." She was "the official 'form-filler-outer.' We made the best of every day; she continued to be positive and instilled hope in our family. Her strength and the incredible journey we made together as a family unit shaped who my brother, father, and I have become."

Her death in 2009 led Zellick to rethink the care process and she realized what she lacked was a "fill-in-the-blank guide to track Mom's care" to lessen stress on the caregiver. "A caregiver is only as useful to the person they are caring for as they are to themselves." A caregiver's ability to help diminishes without adequate sleep, exercise, proper food--and readily accessible medical information.

Zellick's experience led her to create "The Medical Day Planner: The Guide To Help Navigate The Medical Maze" ($34.95 spiral bound from Victory Belt Publishing). She will be appearing at Lyon Books in Chico tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. and caregivers, especially, are invited to attend this free event.

The book is divided into tabbed sections including patient information, phone book, medications, appointments, treatment, history, hospitalizations, and notes. The last section is devoted to the 52-week day planner, each day divided into 15-minute segments, that can organize caregiver "shifts," for example, or medical processes ("8:15 drink contrast; 9:15 arrive at hospital for scan"). Zellick introduces each section and offers examples of how it can be used. Her tone is positive but frank. Documentation is essential in discovering patterns or trends in the health of the one being cared for, and vital when new doctors or new hospitals become part of the caring process.

Because it's spiral bound, the planner opens flat so entries are easy to make. Many of its pages contain practical tips, such as the importance of using the "medication pickup chart" to track who is picking up which medication when. She also discusses financial affairs, trusts vs. wills, attorneys, and medical insurance brokers.

The planner and its website (allthingscaregiver.com) are essential companions for those who seek to provide compassionate and effective care.

Chico neurosurgeon on ailing U.S. health care system

Dr. Jeffrey Lobosky, Co-Director of the Neurotrauma Intensive Care Unit at Enloe Medical Center, and Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery at UCSF, knows the U.S. health care system from the inside and it's not a pretty picture. After years of frustration, and spurred on by his wife, Diana, he's gone public with a must-read examination that leaves no one unscathed.

As he notes in the Prologue, "I will discuss the roles of the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, for-profit hospitals and malpractice litigation in creating the prevailing mess. But I also hope to point out how the American business community, our current political system and their leaders, organized medicine, practicing physicians, and patients themselves hare culpability for our current state of affairs. No one group is fully to blame and no one group is fully blameless."

The details are spelled out in "It's Enough To Make You Sick: The Failure of American Health Care and a Prescription for the Cure" ($27 in hardcover from Rowman and Littlefield), a clear, sometimes wry conversation about the eroding relationship between physicians and their patients.

Dr. Lobosky will be speaking Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books in Chico. An archived interview with the author on Nancy's Bookshelf with Nancy Wiegman (aired on KCHO Northstate Public Radio 9.17 FM Fridays at 10:00 a.m.) is at kchofm.podbean.com.

He notes a disturbing trend in the last decade in the growing use of "hospitalists," doctors whose full time practice is "within the confines of a hospital, admitting and caring for patients whose own doctors no longer provide those services or who are without primary care physicians. ... Care is handed off among members of the group as their 'shift' ends."

Dr. Lobosky charges $3808 for the emergency removal of a blood clot threatening the brain. "Medicaid pays me $1180 for that service. When you calculate the overhead (cost of malpractice insurance and office expenses to see the patients), I net $755 for a three-hour, middle-of-the-night lifesaving surgery, three to six weeks of ICU care, and three months of follow-up."

His solutions spare no one. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out the system is broken. But a brain surgeon may help us use our noggins better.

Harrowing tales of Orland's first responders

Marianne Paiva grew up in Orland where she worked from 1993 to 1997 first as an emergency medical technician and, in the last two years, as a paramedic serving Glenn County and Chico. Now a Chico resident, and a former Northstate Voices columnist, Paiva teaches sociology and has done extensive field research on paramedics. She is also a gifted writer, and the experiences she relates grip the reader with unforgettable, brutal images.

Those stories are contained in "Breathe: Essays From a Recovering Paramedic" ($14.95 in paperback from Memoir Books), available online at www.mariannepaiva.com and in Chico at Lyon Books.

Paiva will be signing copies of "Breathe" tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. at Bella Day Spa, 15 Williamsburg Lane.

"In paramedic school they never teach you how to treat a patient who has tried to commit suicide by slitting his own throat," she writes. "They teach you to bandage a stab wound, a sucking chest wound, a slice on the arm. They tell you how to splint a fractured femur and how to help a baby breathe again, but they never tell you how to bandage a throat that has been slit from ear to ear. I think somewhere, they assume that the person will be dead and there will be no need for bandages." In part, because of the work of Paiva and her teammate, the patient (they are always patients, never victims) survived.

There are other stories where the outcome is far different. Paiva captures the moment-by-moment urgency in the mind of the paramedic: "What do I do now?" Sometimes it is not enough. And sometimes there is that one call that calls an end to a career. "I am done, I realize. I am done. I can't take any more babies beaten and scalded with hot water. And mothers who extinguish cigarettes on their children and fathers who rape their sons and the people who cover it up. ... I can't take one more boy struck by a car on his way to school and my best friends being shot by their boyfriends."

Now, years later, "sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder when the pager will go off." There are many who are grateful that, back then, it did.